


Male Bonding

by Pic_Akai



Series: French 'verse [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pic_Akai/pseuds/Pic_Akai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Greg just want a couple of hours a week away from Sherlock, mostly in order to complain about him. Is that too much to ask? When this time is threatened, they turn to ridiculous methods, which turn out to be enjoyable for more than the reason of Sherlock's reaction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Male Bonding

"Oh, for fuck's…" Greg frowned at John's sudden interruption. It seemed too vehement for the occasion, even if John did absolutely hate Nottingham Forest.

"It's only a football team," he retorted, but was shushed out of any further debate by a hand signal from John.

"Not that. Bloody - stalker over there."

"Eh?" Greg started to turn to look, but John had clearly anticipated it because his hand was on Greg's shoulder before his head had barely moved.

"Don't look!" John hissed, tone entirely at odds with the smile on his face. "It's Sherlock."

"Oh, for fuck's sake…"

"Exactly," John replied, a little grimly.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Greg asked. A few months ago that question would have been rhetorical, but now that he knew John Watson existed, he had faith in the man's abilities to translate from Sherlock's logic to that of the rest of the human race.

"Like I said," John said, and paused to take a swig of his pint, "Stalker."

"He doesn't see you enough at home so he needs to come out and watch you while you're in the pub as well?" Greg raised an eyebrow. He was itching to turn round and make it very clear to Sherlock that they knew he was there, but John seemed to want to keep it a secret, and the other man usually knew what he was doing when it came to Sherlock. "And this is aside from dragging you out of work, and off dates…"

John shook his head as Greg finished off his drink and swivelled on his stool slightly so he could signal the bartender more easily. "It's not just watching me. It's because it's me and you together. He wants to know what we're talking about."

"God forbid he just ask, like anyone else," Greg said. "Can't he tell when you get home anyway, by the colour of your arms of the number of badges on your jacket or something?"

John smiled genuinely then. "He's good, but he's not that good. I think he just wants to know if we're talking about him, really."

Greg registered the hand on his knee before he realised his own thoughts, and he spent a moment or two floundering in confusion before it all caught up. "Don't look," John muttered, looking him dead in the eyes, and Greg nodded slowly, only coming back to himself when the hand was gone.

"Arrogant prick," Greg said, then apologised to the bartender he'd been turning to as he spoke, assuring her he was talking about someone else and ignoring John's giggle. He handed over a tenner and told her to keep the change.

Both men took a sip of their pints. There was a pause afterwards, until they simultaneously registered the other's desire to look at Sherlock, and burst into laughter.

"This is ridiculous," Greg said, the annoyance of Sherlock's yet again inappropriate behaviour somehow cancelled out easily by the sharing of it with his flatmate. "Isn’t it your job to tell him off at this point?"

John shrugged one shoulder. "You can only fight so many battles. I might have been a soldier but even I draw the line somewhere. I spent the morning disinfecting the kitchen and most of the afternoon doing stupid errands for him which he insisted he couldn't do himself. I deserve the night off."

"What's he had you doing now?" Greg asked. They'd fallen into a pattern in the last couple of months of meeting up once a week or so, if their schedules allowed, and the conversation always inevitably turned to the shared whirlwind in their lives. Even so, Greg still found it fascinating to listen to what he'd been up to recently. Possibly, he thought, because it wasn't him it was happening to, and it made him count his blessings. He might have known Sherlock a lot longer but he hadn't been anywhere near daft enough to move in with him. Given the choice he'd have gone with homelessness.

"Oh, just the usual," John replied. "Had to get, I think - seven different loaves of bread? From seven different shops, naturally. And then come home and slice them in an infinite number of different ways. I always thought sliced bread was sliced bread, but apparently I was wrong. Also had me do up his flies for him when he came out of the toilet."

Greg froze with his pint halfway to his mouth, eyes flicking to John as he looked for signs that this was a wind-up. He didn't find any. "He got you to do up his flies." It was a statement repeated in monotone, not a question, because surely he'd misheard.

"Yup," John confirmed.

"And you did this…why?"

John looked very serious all of a sudden. "The consequences if I didn't would not have been worth it," was all he said, and Greg decided some things were better left unknown.

Despite that decision, he was still a policeman at the end of the day, and sometimes you had to ask questions you didn’t want the answers to, like it or not. "He's not…abusing you or anything, is he?" His tone was faltering, and he frowned at John's explosion of laughter.

"Sherlock? Only ever for science," John said, and Greg's feeling of not quite being reassured must have showed on his face, because John rolled his eyes and added, "He is not making me do anything I don’t want to do." He sighed suddenly. "It's madness living with him - absolute madness - but it's worth it."

"Rather you than me, mate."

"Mmm," John agreed, and a silence fell again.

"Is he still watching?" Greg asked after another couple of mouthfuls and a goal scored in the background.

"I can't look properly to tell or he'll see," John said, "But I haven't seen him leaving, so I think so."

"Why can't we let him know we've seen?" Greg asked.

John screwed up his face. "I just think if he knows we know, he'll think it's all right to be even more blatant about it. Like joining us."

"Oh," Greg said. "Let's not do that."

A sudden, ridiculously immature thought crossed his mind. He dismissed it at first out of hand, but John must have seen the smile he had for a moment, because his face had an answering one. "What?" John asked.

Greg considered it again for a second or two and figured that if he was going to share a ridiculous idea with anyone, it would definitely be John Watson, because the man seemed to thrive on ridiculous.

"I was just thinking," he said, and leant in closer as he lowered his voice, "That if he's going to look, we could always give him something to look at."

John turned his head slightly so his eyes instead of his ear were facing Greg. "Like what?"

Greg smirked again, unable to stop it. "Little bit of role play," he replied, and then to clarify, "Do whatever you want with it," as his left hand reached up to curl around the back of John's neck.

He used his thumb to stroke the side of John's head gently, trying to wipe the smile off his face and get into character. John stared at him, looking a bit dumb, so Greg shrugged mentally and leant in even further, pulling John's head towards him as he did.

He really wasn't sure what to expect, other than that John would play along and put on a show. Whether the show would be one of a passionate embrace or a huge argument or something else entirely; that was the question. He'd learned over the months he'd known the man that Doctor Watson was far from predictable, at least when it came to specifics. You could pretty much depend on him to be loyal to his mates, obey the Hippocratic oath and not to run when the going got tough, but how he'd choose to fulfil those objectives at any given moment in time was a mystery to most people, Greg thought Sherlock included.

Still, even if Sherlock could predict him down to the second, Greg was fairly sure he hadn't predicted this, especially since neither he nor John had. John responded when Greg pressed their lips together, like this was a real attempt at seduction instead of a play put on for their mutual lunatic, though Greg flattered himself for a moment or two in thinking that this was perhaps down to his natural skills in seduction anyway.

Greg thought he'd play it slower than he would if this were real; there was no need for tongue or anything because Sherlock couldn't possibly see from where he was just how intimate the kiss was. He had a sudden creepy thought that the man would try to work it out later using samples of John's saliva, seeing how much of it was mixed with Greg's, but that dismissed itself sharply enough when John apparently decided that slow was not the way to play it, and a tongue ran across Greg's bottom lip before it entered his mouth, not so much seeking permission as demanding it.

Greg vaguely registered hands. One of John's was in his hair, holding firmly to the longer strands in the back, while the other was resting on his knee again, only this time John's thumb was lightly stroking back and forth. It was a bit distracting, but it wasn't a bad distraction, so Greg wasn't complaining. His own right hand had come to rest lightly on John's shoulder. He wanted to use it to pull John closer to him, but he was resisting for two reasons; one, they were in quite a public place and this kiss was already fairly involved, and two, this kiss was supposedly a show for Sherlock, as opposed to being a precursor to anything else. Even if John really enjoyed the kiss - and he seemed to be doing so, judging by the way he was breathing heavily through his nose and the way his tongue was now licking at Greg's over and over, like he was trying to coax dopamine out of it - Greg was still pretty sure he wasn't aiming to take this show all the way to the bedroom.

Once he'd figured that out, his next thought was that if this was all he was going to get, he might as well focus on enjoying it, because it really was incredibly enjoyable. He was sucking on John's tongue now, and John had started making these little, almost-unheard moans, and his hand was tugging just that bit harder at Greg's hair and the sensation was -

Ruined, when someone simultaneously tapped Greg on the shoulder and said, "Gentlemen," in a deep, unimpressed-sounding voice, and Greg was about a tenth of a millimetre away from biting down on John's tongue. The vibe they had going was already pretty damn dead, but that would've been a whole lot worse, even if John could have treated himself.

He opened his eyes and leaned back, looking in the direction of the voice, as did John. A middle-aged man with a beer belly and a white shirt stained with at least two different colours looked back at the both of them. "I don't mind the kissing," he said, sighing as he spoke, "But when it looks like you're on the verge of groping, you've either gotta sober up or take it out of here."

"Sorry," Greg mumbled, dropping his eyes away from the bloke, and the barman left, but when his gaze came up again and met John's, he couldn't help but laugh.

John grinned back at him. "I suppose we're quite convincing," he said.

"Seems so," Greg said, and then looked down to confirm the feeling he'd re-registered of John's hand still on his thigh.

John evidently followed his gaze, because there was a short pause before he said, "Oh, sorry," and removed it.

Greg weighed up his options for about half a second and decided to go with ah, fuck it. "That's all right. I don't mind." He took a swig of his beer afterwards; post-traumatic Dutch courage, or something. Also so he could put off looking for John's reaction for a few seconds.

When he did, he wasn't sure what he saw there. John had a small frown, but he didn't seem overly concerned. Greg took another drink, waiting while John sorted through his thoughts.

"Sherlock said you were married," John said finally, and that was definitely not what Greg had been expecting to hear. He cleared his throat, matched the frown and decided he was too hot. He took his coat off, awkwardly as he tried not to get off the stool, and dropped it folded to the floor, where he had no doubt it began to soak up several fluids he didn't want to know about. Well, it was due a wash anyway.

"Sorry, maybe that was-" John started to say, and his thoughts returned swiftly from their tangent.

"No, no, it's fine," Greg said, and frowned harder, to show he was thinking. "I was, yeah." He returned his gaze to John's, then. "We've been divorced two years."

"Right…" Greg waited for the rest of that sentence. "Sherlock didn't actually mention that bit."

"He didn't?" Greg started to turn, remembering that the person they were talking about was actually present, but stopped himself before he did so. "He's never mentioned it to me, actually. Which is weird because normally he wants to do that crowing…thing." He waved his hand vaguely in the air, encompassing Sherlock's smug face and condescending tone and ridiculous twirly coat, and knew John knew what he meant.

John hmmed agreement. "He said you had kids, too?"

Greg nodded. "Twins. Louis and Amélie, five." He didn’t bother looking for the slight raised eyebrow because he'd seen it often enough before. "Their mother's French." Sometimes here - if he liked someone enough to want to talk to them more - he'd elaborate, explain how he and Charlotte had been friends when they were kids, when he used to holiday in France with his grandparents every summer and most Easters, and it had seemed like fate threw them together when they ran into one another two weeks after she started a job in London. But then he remembered; they hadn't been talking about that. "What have my kids got to do with anything?"

"Nothing," John shrugged. "Just interested." He smiled, then frowned. "You've never mentioned them before."

Greg smiled himself, and this one he knew was the picture in the dictionary next to the word 'rueful'. "I know," he said. "I…I get them one month, then Charlotte gets them one month. Or rather I used to…but they're school age now. So we decided it was less disruptive if they stayed in one place for a while. At least a term. Then we can work schedules and things around them, and…" He trailed off, shaking his head, because it was a boring explanation that didn't really explain what John wanted to know anyway. And it was partly a lie; they hadn't decided. She'd decided. And since she was the one who had the job where she wouldn't be woken in the middle of the night and expected to rush off somewhere across the city, so she could be there if they woke up instead of a hastily-hired babysitter, they both knew that 'at least a term' really meant 'until they move out'.

Or got old enough to stay on their own, but Greg wasn't kidding himself that by then they wouldn't have it firmly entrenched in their heads that mum was the caretaker and dad was just the guy they saw on weekends and holidays, who picked them up and took them places and let them do things mum wouldn't and fed them full of junk food because he felt guilty about the fact that he couldn't do the other stuff.

"When I don't have them," he said, "I try not to think about them. If I don't think about them, I can't miss them."

John blew out a long breath. "Sorry, mate."

Greg shook his head. "Not your fault." He smiled.

"It's Christmas in three weeks," John said. He said it hesitantly, but he still said it, and Greg guessed the subject wasn't over yet. "So you haven't seen them since they started school?"

Greg shrugged and tried to tell it like it was someone else's story. "I've had them a couple of weekends. Last couple of months I've just been too busy, though. I've spent half of it with you and him." He jerked his head ever-so-slightly in Sherlock's direction. "I mean, even when it's not that busy…even if I finish work at five, which basically never happens, they're in bed by six. They're knackered from school. So I mean, I could turn up and do bath time and stories, but that's meant to be winding down, not getting excited because daddy's here." He sighed and took a drink. "I'm not flattering myself into thinking I'm that exciting…"

"But you are," John smiled. Greg met his eyes as he heard it and couldn't help smiling back.

There was a pause while they continued to smile at each other, and then John's eyes flicked away and the spell was broken. "Oh, bollocks," John said under his breath. "He's coming over here."

"You're kidding," Greg said, voice on the edge of a groan, and this time he really wasn't in the mood. Being around Sherlock could be irritating at the best of times, but when you didn't want him to pick up on something it was downright dangerous. For whatever reason, Sherlock hadn't mentioned either his divorce or the loss of his kids up till now, but that didn't mean he wouldn't start to dig at it if he thought it would piss Greg off and send him home, thus returning John to Sherlock. It was a ridiculous way to look at it, but Sherlock was a ridiculous man.

"Worked the first time," John said, as he reached up to pull Greg's head towards him, and it took Greg a moment or two to realise that they were kissing again. It was just as nice as he'd remembered it, only this time it seemed a lot slower, more considered. John kept placing little pecks on his mouth, never really keeping his lips still at all, and both his thumbs were on Greg's cheeks, stroking gently. It was lovely, and Greg would have been happy to remain there all evening, but -

"Don't feel you have to put on a show for me," came the irritated-sounding interruption. Greg sighed as they parted, though John didn't let him pull back immediately, taking a few more kisses before they separated. He thought but carefully didn't say that the irritation seemed rich, seeing as it was they who had been interrupted and Sherlock who was doing the interrupting.

"Hi, Sherlock," John said, mixing resigned and cheerful into one, and Greg knew he'd had enough practice of that tone to be very good at it. "What do you want?"

Sherlock stared at him. "You don't usually ask me what I want," he said. "You usually tell me what social convention I'm breaking and then give me a spurious reason as to why you can't join me, which you inevitably do." He turned the stare on Greg. "Is it the presence of our friendly detective inspector which has caused the change?"

"Other people might think John has to apologise for your behaviour," Greg said, before John could speak. "I know better." He turned around to take another swig of his pint, hid his grin, and deliberately tried to keep his body casual, because he knew it pissed Sherlock off and it wasn't something he often got to do at work.

Sherlock's eyes were narrowed when he turned round, but John had that same benign smile on his face which meant he was sort of tuning out whatever Sherlock was doing until it proved to be stupid enough to take notice of. "Why are you kissing for my benefit?" Sherlock asked.

John barely raised his eyebrows, and Greg smirked. "If I were trying to benefit someone by kissing," John said, "I'd probably try to kiss that person." He left a pause and then added, "And I'm not trying to benefit you."

"Yeah," Greg said, on a whim, "He's mine." He tried to hide that grin but couldn't, though John's answering one wasn't exactly making it any easier.

Sherlock sighed sharply, which meant he was getting more irritated, which cheered Greg up even more. "The way you kiss makes it clear this is the first time it's happened, possibly the second if the first time was a long while ago but you haven't known each other long enough for that to be the case. Your-"

"Actually," John interrupted him, "We met on holiday when I was eight."

Greg delighted in Sherlock's stunned look, probably induced first from being interrupted by his faithful lackey - he really liked John, but the guy had to face it, that was what he was - and then from the idea of actually being wrong.

John waited until Sherlock's eyes had moved to Greg's face before he grinned and gave in. "We didn't really."

Sherlock's face pinched even further. "Do you have a point, or are you simply interrupting me because you find it childishly amusing?"

"I don't care why," Greg said, "But I'm definitely finding it amusing."

"Partly amusing," John said, and paused to take a drink, which Greg knew for a fact was another way to annoy Sherlock, "And partly because I don't want to know. Your deductive talents are amazing, we've established that. But sometimes, I just like to keep things private. Including what other people think of me. Sometimes, very rarely, ignorance is bliss. So when it comes to personal relationships, I'd really rather you didn't tell me anything." His eyes flicked to Greg for a second. "Half the fun is finding out on your own."

Sherlock seemed to chew over this for a moment or two before responding. "I was given to understand that much of the emotional torment people suffer is because they _don't_ know what's going on inside other people's heads."

"True," John said. "Still doesn't mean they want to know - not like you tell it, anyway."

Sherlock frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."

John shrugged. "People don't make sense."

Sherlock turned to Greg again. "I am intrigued, though - was this all a thinly-veiled ploy to get to kiss John, or were you simply trying to irritate me?"

John sighed. "You saw us notice you."

"Of course, John," Sherlock said. "My powers of observation are, as you have said yourself on numerous occasions, amazing. Your powers of hiding tells, on the other hand, are….not."

"Bloody hell," Greg said, "That was almost polite. Did you train him to do that?"

"So which was it?" Sherlock asked, not giving John time to reply.

Greg shrugged at him. "Who knows," he said. "I'm not even sure. People don't make sense."

John grinned at him, so he grinned back, and they continued grinning stupidly all the way through Sherlock's annoyed noises and flouncing out.

"So," John said, a few minutes later. "I don't want to ruin the mystery of why you did, or anything, but now that he's gone-"

Greg didn't bother waiting for him to finish the question. He leant forward instead and kissed him into silence.

As he'd learnt from several years of listening to Sherlock spout off crazy theories at the times when he was usually most stressed, silence was golden.

**Author's Note:**

> I adore concrit.


End file.
